Clothing retailer Next has managed to beat all of its rivals and come out at the head of the pack in the latest search rankings complied by Pi Datametrics.

Analysts looked into search engine stats and revealed that over the past 12 months, Next was entered as a query over 82 million times by British consumers looking to snap up fashion itemsonline. 

Interestingly enough, this represents a very slight downturn in the search volume that Next has received in the past half-decade, although it retains a solid lead over second-place brand John Lewis, which netted a little more than 60 million searches.

Third place went to online-only fashion outlet Asos, with 50 million searches recorded for its brand name between May of 2018 and April of 2019. Debenhams and New Look rounded out the top 5, with the former coming very close to pipping Asos at the post.

Another key finding in the report is that the majority of the largest fashion sites operating in the UK at the moment have actually seen their share of search volumes decline this year. There were some winners, with JD Sports enjoying a 17 per cent increase in searches, while other brands such as BooHoo and Matalan experienced smaller but no less significant single-digit increases.

The most significant gain was made by PrettyLittleThing, which used to sit at around seven million branded searches a year, but has now enjoyed a fairly meteoric rise to almost 25 million.

The fashion sector has been facing sales pressure in recent months, not just because of muted consumer spending and flagging confidence in the economy, but also because of campaigns urging consumers to be more eco-conscious with their purchases and avoid the temptation to splash out on clothing that will only be worn once. This makes the above results even more impressive.